Student creativity often challenges adults' logic

NoneMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 6:11 am, Monday, November 28, 2011

By Jack Hickman

Trinity School

It was all very interesting how Mr. E, my high school physics teacher, was able to compare and to mesh together the volumetric equations for the flow of water through a pipe with those that described traffic on a freeway. With his carefully constructed diagrams and arrows on the blackboard, these seemingly disparate circumstances seemed to make sense. What didn't make sense at the time to either Feast (my lab partner) or Famine (me) was why a 1 1/2-hole had been drilled in the top of our lab table to accommodate the 3/4-gas pipe that surfaced between us. It supplied our Bunsen burner and seemed an obvious breach of the adage to "measure twice, cut once." This over-sized drilling of the pipe hole caused much distraction with the pipe as it provided untold hours of our finger thumping. Best yet, interesting vibrational sonatas beneath the floor were created when pushed beyond where it wanted to be and when suddenly released from its strained position.

This created wonderful and mysterious clanks and groans from our northwest corner of the room.

At that time, the Midland High School Student Council operated a mom-and pop-type store on the first floor. This venture catered to those of us who had lost a pencil, needed a box of hole reinforcements or more likely, harbored those students who were abusing the freedom provided by their hall passes to the restroom. There gossip was invented, exaggerated and then loosed in the corridors of the unsuspecting. It was the hangout for those who discovered madras shirts.

The physics lab was located immediately above the store on the second floor. This physical arrangement of the school was totally unknown to Feast and Famine until that day when their physics class was interrupted by a knock at the door. Mr. E paused his lecture relating traffic jams and their relationship to the action of Drano with sluggish fluids and answered the knock. There stood "Daddy Jack," dean of students and two maintenance men armed with crowbars and pipe wrenches. I overheard that James, student council representative tending the store on the first floor, had reported water leaking down from the ceiling, most likely a ruptured pipe.

I never will know from whence came the inspiration to pour that beaker of water down the over-sized pipe hole. Most likely my innate curiosity simply to do something and then observe the results trumped common sense. At any rate, that component of the scientific method that deals with cause and effect instantaneously became crystal clear. Feast and I immediately jumped up and shakily confessed to the four gentlemen the probable cause of the student council store's early closing. As I recall, there was a collective stunned silence as I, a rather scrawny 17-year-old in the presence of large, crowbar-toting adults, tried to explain actions for which there clearly were no explanations. Sheer terror gripped my imagination as I pictured other nearby holes drilled in wood -- those that graced the paddle hanging on the wall of Daddy Jack's office. Those holes effectively served to enhance the fiery effects on those who transgressed the mores of good old MHS. At that moment I was feeling the virtual sting of that instrument as Daddy Jack's glare tattooed his ire on my psyche.

Daddy Jack's good nature spared us.

Kids these days still create situations at school that challenge adult logic and seemingly call into question the evolutionary direction of the human brain. In the name of fun, many creative pranks have risen to the level of genius -- such as the many alarm clocks hidden under the acoustic ceiling tiles of our classrooms and all set to go off at different times during the day. Another recent classic, in my opinion, was the nocturnal removal of every classroom desk from within the school to the practice field outdoors.

The desks were repositioned in order as they had been when in the classrooms. It was a virtual recreation of the walled indoor setting to the environmentally rich outdoor arena. Dali could not have created a more surreal image. The surprising appearance of a VW Beetle in the hallway one morning also was a nice touch. Unfortunately it was discovered that the special screwdriver generally used to attach and reattach door hinges on the school had not been utilized to get the car into the hall. Studied speculation blamed a 5-pound hammer whose rather clumsy application left a noted misalignment to an otherwise true opening.

There is no way to grade or to give proper credit to the non-linear wisdom of the creative student whose actions often generate hours of chat in the teachers' lounge. Imbedded in my favorite saying, "Does there have to be a reason for everything?" I find great solace and a smile in attempting to better understand both me and my students.